


You Are A Special Girl, Pandora

by BabiesAteMyDingo



Category: The Girl with All the Gifts (2016 movie), The Girl with All the Gifts - M. R. Carey
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, End of the World, F/M, Mental Instability, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 02:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9214145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabiesAteMyDingo/pseuds/BabiesAteMyDingo
Summary: Helen Justineau may have survived the end of the world, but living is another thing entirely. Pandora had a box, and Justineau is now trapped in one. There can be no happy ending.





	

**Author's Note:**

> See notes at the end, this was written after watching the movie and not being entirely satisfied at the ending!

 

* * *

 

**_One_  **

Her mother had always called her a dreamer. 

Well, that was kind. _Hopeless,_ had been another. _Naïve._  

Maybe that was why she resonated with the story of Pandora so much. That even after releasing so much evil, there was still hope left. A tiny, flickering flame of it maybe, but there all the same.  

She had felt it, the warm heat of hope every time she stepped in front of her students. Because no matter how many boxes she had to tick, how many tests of learning and reactions Dr. Caldwell demanded her do, when she looked into the children’s faces…that’s what she saw. Children. 

They spoke, they reasoned, therefore they _were,_ all of Dr. Caldwell’s assumptions and bloody hypothesis be damned. They _learned._  

And so, like Pandora, curiosity got the better of her and she opened the box. 

Helen Justineau stared blankly out the grimy window of her safe prison at the children sat outside, those in bright orange jumpsuits conversing quietly.  

Melanie roamed between the children, disciplining the more feral ones when they did not obey. The new clothes Helen had given the girl had been soiled by blood and the white shirt was unrecognizable. She was something else now, was their Melanie. 

Helen snorted, pulling away from the glass pane to rummage for the sheets of paper she had prepared. Their. Who else was left now, but her? Here at the end of all human life as they had known it…here she was. 

 _Take that Mother,_ she thought bitterly. _I survived it all. And for what?_  

But down that path lay madness, and she knew it. Knew how fine the line between sanity and losing everything could be- hadn’t Dr. Caldwell shown her that? 

Melanie hadn’t needed to tell her. Helen could make her own assumptions and had after waking up to this new world. Alone. Always alone. 

“Good morning, class,” she said automatically, the wash of a polite chorus of the repeated greeting filtering through the tinny speakers mounted along the far wall. As always, Melanie’s voice filtered through the loudest, the most adoring. 

“Today I thought we might start with-“ 

“A story, miss?” 

Helen paused. “Maybe later.” 

She had believed in the stories once. Had enjoyed reading them to the children who soaked up every tale, every cautionary parable. Mythology had been one of Helen’s favorites, the complexity of the different pathos, the characters, the adventure and romance. The children’s rapt attention and excitement at her lessons had made her feel wanted, special. To Melanie, Helen had been a god, a creature of pure goodness and light, and like the flawed human she truly was, Helen had reveled in it. Craved that feeling of belonging. 

Stupid. Naïve.  

And the gods do not forget. 

The stories Helen had once told with such enthusiasm now tasted like ash in her mouth. Mocking shadows of a world that had never been and never would be. Not now. Ghosts of it may remain in these children, passed on through the new generations until even Helen was only some mythical being, whispered about in stories. 

She would teach, because that was all she had. All she knew. But the flame of hope she had once spoken of so lovingly was extinguished; gutted the moment an inferno raged in the city, the strike of a match killing her soul as effectively as it killed the physical minds of every human left. 

Helen had opened the box. And there would be no salvation for her. 

 _Dramatic,_ her mother would have scolded. _Be more practical._  

So Helen taught mathematics. She taught science. Reading and writing, composition and even song one sunny afternoon after Melanie had found an old tape player on one of her trips. Helen heard again the strains of music long forgotten and thought it a bittersweet torture. 

Helen taught them what it was to be human, and like the excellent students they were, they learned. 

If any comfort was to be found, it was in that. 

* * *

 ** _Two_**  

Helen cocked her head, watching the path of a large cluster of fungus float by on the breeze. It looked harmless, like the dandelion heads she used to blow on despite her mother’s warnings as a child. But only a few moments outside and she’d become something else. Hungry.  _A_ hungry. Not like the children. 

The spore bumped against the window. Helen traced it’s shape, the fine hairs and filaments designed to take root in her lungs, to wiggle and writhe into her veins and bloodstream until they would finally reach her brain. 

A parasite, only forming a symbiotic relationship in it’s second life-cycle. Fascinating, truly. Helen wondered where it came from, if anyone had ever known.  

 _Outer space probably,_ Kieran had once enthused, long before his exposed ribs had been gnawed on by the very children she now taught. _Like that film, right? The old one they show in the mess hall sometimes._ _The one where they steal your body._  

“Is that so?” she murmured to the spore as it brushed impatiently against the window. “Are you from Mars?” 

Caldwell once talked about ants, and a fungus found here on Earth. Maybe some paranoid government did experiments, made something else. Beacon had been obsessed with finding the cause, then a cure. They didn’t see this coming- the fungus maturing. Releasing. 

The breeze laughed, sending the spore tumbling away. Today was Saturday, and Helen did not teach. The weekend was for the children to hunt, to explore their new world and build something new. Melanie ran with them, wild and free at last with no walls to confine her, and Helen was left alone.  

Confined. 

The children brought her canned food, which she decontaminated in the air lock to ensure all lingering spores were dead before bringing it inside. It always tasted funny after that, and for the first two weeks she lived in fear that the decontamination wouldn’t work, that she’d still turn. That the tiny cooking stove she found in a cupboard would not be powerful enough to scorch away any infection. 

She didn’t know why she was so afraid of that. Why her mind still clung so stubbornly to the idea that it could _survive._  

There was an hazard suit in the lab. She had almost felt hope again then, but the suit was old, cracking at the rubber seams and wholly unsuitable for venturing outside. She had thrown it under the steel table in a rage and couldn’t stomach facing it again. 

Sometimes Melanie brought her books. Pictures. Things to occupy the long lonely night, and though something dark and angry still coiled in Helen’s belly every time she looked at the girl, Helen always smiled. Always thanked. She had played the role for too long, had imagined that she had loved the girl for real. Would have died for her, died to protect her. 

 _Naïve._  

Helen drew away from the window, glancing around her bedroom. It was meant to house close to ten, but now it belonged to only one. She had picked the bed closest to the window, piling the mattress high with blankets to keep warm. She turned the generators off at night, to conserve fuel. Though most of the lab was solar powered, a small generator that helped power some of the smaller machinery took gasoline. Melanie promised she would find more, but fuel would still be a finite resource. Eventually there would be no more. 

The window overlooked grass and a fountain-a nice enough view. Slowly Helen stretched her legs out in front of her, burrowing her socked feet in the coiled blankets. She could plan out her lessons for the week, or read. She had even written some, sketching out a plot to a novel she would never write, based too much on loss.  

Reading it was.  

Helen rolled onto her belly, reaching for the stack of books beside the bed. The first was a dog-eared paperback, spine broken and the pages yellowed with age and sun damage. On the cover she could still make out a couple, some brawny man catching a swooning woman, her bare breasts heaving as her hero cradled her delicate form against his muscular chest.  

 _She was lost, but then_ ** _he_** _found her,_ the subtitle dramatically throbbed. _Their love would raze the world._  

A brittle laugh forced itself out of her throat. She’d be better off throwing it into the incinerator toilet, let it _raze_ there, what rubbish, foolish, _naivety._ It had no place in THIS world. No place in the future. It belonged with the numerous dead, the broken dreams. 

Her fingers flicked to the first page. 

* * *

 

**_Three_  **

A rhythmic pounding woke Helen up. 

She groaned, rolling unhappily out of her cot onto the floor, narrowly missing a bright yellow bucket with HAZARDOUS WASTE ONLY stenciled in black lettering. The nausea that had kept her up all night reminded her why she had placed the bucket so close to the bed, and she scrambled to it on all fours, clutching at the rim with damp fingers, retching. 

Melanie watched her from the window, a mimicry of concern in her eyes, her fist resting against the glass. Red smeared across the slick pane, her mouth stained a bright berry red. 

“Miss Justineau?” she asked worriedly, voice muffled. “Are you alright?” 

“I’m fine,” Helen managed hoarsely, face flushed and clammy with sweat. The sickly smell of regurgitated processed food wafted up her nose and her stomach heaved again. “I’m _fine,_ Melanie.” 

“You don’t look it. You look like Kev after he ate some leaves off that bush.” 

Helen slumped against the wall, bucket cradled in the crook of her arm. 

“Kev?” she asked weakly. 

“One of the ferals. I’m giving them names.” Melanie’s face cracked open with a smile so bright it hurt. Here at the end she thrived. Had found her purpose. Her hope. 

 _I should have let them cut you,_ Helen thought, but there was no anger there. Just quiet resignation. It wouldn’t have changed anything. This would have happened eventually, why not now. Why not her. 

“It’s probably just some food poisoning,” Helen swallowed, closing her eyes. “Give me a day and I’ll recover.” 

She heard Melanie’s fingers tap insect-like against the glass. “I can bring you something? What do you need?” 

 _For none of this to happen._  

“No, it’s alright, Melanie. Thank you. Tell the children I’ll…I’ll be back tomorrow.” 

“Alright,” Melanie still sounded dubious, but she was always obedient to Helen. The same obsessive love that had once frightened Helen had it’s uses. If only she had done more _._ If only she had _known…_  

“Be safe,” Helen called reflexively as she sensed the girl pull away from the window. The act had become a part of her. Her punishment. She didn’t have to open her eyes to see Melanie’s wide toothed grin. 

“I love you, Miss Justineau.“ 

Helen thought to the dog-eared paperback with the swooning woman and her masculine savior. That had been love once. What people perceived it to be. 

 _Their love would raze the world._  

“I love you too,” Helen whispered, reaching for the bucket again. 

* * *

 

 ** _Four_**  

Helen stood in the airlock, as close as she could get to the outside world, hands pressed against the cool glass as she struggled for a reaction that never came. 

It was raining, long lines of water obscuring her view of the outside. The sky was dark with storm clouds and she had let the generators run longer, just so she didn’t have to sit in the dark with her thoughts. She could see her own reflection in the glass, pale and drawn, hair messily piled on top of her head in a bun. She hadn’t used the shower in days, could smell her own sweat. She knew she needed to do more but every time she tried to undress, her hands faltered at her grimy sweater, trembling above her abdomen. 

She didn’t want to see. Seeing would mean it was _real._  

“You’re losing it,” she told her reflection, the woman frowning back. “You need to get a grip.” 

She laughed, and it echoed hollowly around the airlock. “After all, it isn’t the end of the _world!_ ” 

She laughed until she couldn’t breathe, doubled over and lungs burning, hot tears streaking down her face. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass, sucking in deep breaths.  

There was movement outside as one of the children prowled close to check on her. Melanie had taken over an office building nearby, setting up a place for the children to sleep. Smart girl that she was, she also posted sentries. Hungries may not attack but there were always others. Others like the children, who sought to take over Melanie’s small colony, to claim it as she had once claimed-through violence. 

Helen shooed the child away with a wave, shakily standing again. Not all of them understood Melanie’s devotion to the caged woman, but they respected their leader enough to let it be. They were so _smart._ Melanie had discovered a library the past week and Helen sensed there was only so much longer she would be useful to them. Would Melanie tire of her? The girl knew how to open the airlock, could wipe her life out in only a blink. 

Helen sighed, breath misting against the airlock door. No. Melanie would keep her alive, as Helen had once done for her. An elegant punishment in the guise of mercy that would make Hades proud.

Hades. There she went with the Greek mythology again. Melanie always asked for a story on Tuesdays, as they once had at the base. Helen obliged, though she never read Greek mythology to the children.  

 _I’ll read anything,_ she had told them. _Anything but that._  

Because the gods do not forget. 

The romance novel stayed buried beneath Helen’s cot, spine so broken the pages were beginning to come loose. 

* * *

 

**_Five_  **

It was a Sunday, and Helen found herself in the airlock, lying on the cold floor with her bare feet pressed against the glass door, only inches from green grass that she had once stomped through without a second thought. She hummed a song, but couldn’t remember the words or what it was called. 

“Miss Justineau?” 

Helen opened her eyes, staring up at the steel ceiling. “Hello, Melanie.” 

The girl hovered by the door, awkwardly picking at the blood crusting her shirt. She was growing, Helen realized. As if that now she was free from confinement she could advance, fill out. “Are you still sick?” 

Sick was a concept they had covered recently during story time. As far as Helen could tell, beyond eating something not nutritious to them- _not meat,_ her mind helpfully supplied, _anything that doesn’t bleed-_ the children didn’t get sick. Melanie especially thought it a strange notion, but worried about it’s affects on Helen almost daily. 

Helen rose up on her elbows to look at the girl more fully. “No. I’m not sick.” 

Melanie’s eyes fell doubtfully at the bare strip of skin showing between Helen’s trousers and her vest-shirt, at the bulging flesh beginning to show. “You look…different. Not much, but just enough.” 

Helen sank back down onto her back with a tired sigh. “I know.” 

Something caught Melanie’s attention elsewhere, and she bared her teeth, feral for all of a second as she sniffed the air before the human mask descended once more.  

“I’ll find you some gaas-oh-leene this weekend,” Melanie promised, enjoying the freedom away from the base and its stringent ways to begin messing up her pronunciations and grammar. Helen had never understood the strict rules, what she had perceived as tyranny. She had thought it cruel, especially when Sergeant- 

“Gasoline,” Helen corrected quietly. “It’s pronounced gasoline.” 

Melanie made a sound of annoyance. “I know.” 

They stayed in silence for a while, Helen counting the scratches in the metal of the ceiling and walls. 

 _One. Two. Three-_  

“Miss Justineau?“ 

“Yes, Melanie.” 

“Are you…happy?” 

Helen blinked. Happy. A foreign concept she wasn’t sure she had ever really understood. Happy was an act and she had taken to the stage of it with the attitude of all actors- the show must go on. After all, how did someone live in this world and be _happy?_ How could they stand by and watch children be dissected for science and then paste a smile on their face and chirp _Good Morning_ every day like they bloody well meant it? To discover that maybe, perhaps they hadn’t been children all along. 

Pigs to slaughter she had once thought of them. How ironic. 

“Why?” 

Melanie’s eyes were soulful, as if she truly meant every word. As if she could _feel._ “Because I want you to be happy. You always kept me safe and…now I’m keeping _you_ safe. But…you’re not the same.” 

 _Are any of us, honestly._  

Was it the fungus that cared about her fate, or Melanie? Were they different or one and the same? 

And did it even matter anymore? 

Helen grinned at the ceiling until her cheeks ached and her eyes burned from not blinking. 

 _One. Two. Three. Four._ _Five._  

“I’m pregnant, Melanie.” 

* * *

 ** _Six_**  

“You look awful.” 

Helen blew a strand of hair out of her face, not looking up from her work. “Like you can talk, _Doctor._ ” 

Caldwell looked amused. She sat on the shiny examination table like it was the most normal thing in the world, the older woman watching as Helen painstakingly glued the tacky romance novel back together. Helen’s belly was bigger now and she sat cross legged to accommodate it. 

The book had no more spine, the cover had fallen off completely and the pages begun to scatter, but Helen had found a small sachet of super glue hidden away in the lab. It would do. 

“Honestly, here at the end of everything and you’re reading _pulp fiction._ _”_  

For a dead woman, Caldwell talked a lot. Helen shot her a glare. 

“It’s romance, Caldwell. Something I suspect your dusty old genitals have never experienced.” 

Caldwell _cackled_ _,_ the lines at the edges of her eyes creasing _._ “Oh Helen. If we had met under other circumstances, we would have been friends.” 

“Now I know I’m hallucinating,” Helen grumbled, wedging the still drying book beneath a heavier one to maintain pressure on the bonding pages. “Real Caldwell wouldn’t have said that.” 

“Oh?” Caldwell arched a perfect eyebrow. “I found your loyalty to the girl admirable, you know. Foolish, but admirable.” 

“Well I learned from that mistake, didn’t I?” 

Caldwell slid from the table. Her boots made no sound on the metal floor, and if Helen reached out, her fingers would touch nothing. 

She had tried. 

“I was foolish too,” Caldwell acknowledged, following as Helen went to wash her hands in the small restroom sink. Recycled and purified rainwater. The scientists really had thought of everything. “I let my obsession for a cure override my logic. Even if I had taken the girl, what good would it have done? There’s no-one left to give a cure _to._ And, in the end, my hubris is what doomed the world. Assuming I could give so much information and she would not use it. The last act of a desperate woman.” 

“I taught her well,” Helen muttered.  

Caldwell’s look was sad. “Yes. Yes you did. I suppose that is the legacy that will live on. Not my attempts for a cure. Not my work, the sacrifices that were made. The humanity we lost. What was it all for, in the end?” 

Helen gripped the sides of the sink until her knuckles went white. “To prepare her.” 

Caldwell crossed her arms. She looked as she had the last time Helen saw her, gas mask aside. Hand still bloody. Infected.

“ _I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,”_ Caldwell quoted. “To think we clung so fiercely to an imaginary future that we ignored what was staring us in the face.” 

“And what was that?” 

“Evolution. Adapt or die. An extinction of a species.”  

Helen laughed, her faced stretching and twisting in the small mirror mounted over the sink. “I’m sure Darwin would have been proud.” 

Caldwell paused in the doorway, gazing out towards the airlock. “They’ve certainly proved his theories right. Though they advance at a much faster rate than we ever predicted. Away from the base, they are free to expand. Free to live. It’s truly remarkable.” 

Caldwell looked so _real._ The light playing on her pale hair, the sharpness in her gaze. Helen bit down a scream. 

“Tell me something.” 

Caldwell turned, cocking her head in the same way Melanie did when she was curious. “About?” 

“Anything. Everything.” 

Caldwell smiled. “I can only tell you what you already know. I’m a product of your mind after all.” 

Helen shuffled out of the restroom, wrapping her arms around herself. One of her socks had a hole in the toe, the floor freezing against her skin. “What’s left of it.” 

Caldwell trailed after her, silent and not there. As Helen turned towards the kitchen, Caldwell’s ghostly hand drifted towards Helen’s belly. There would be no sensation, but Helen flinched anyways. 

“What did you feel when it first moved?”  

Irritation sparked behind Helen’s tired eyes. “What does that matter?” 

“It matters.” 

Helen mulled the question over, smoothing a hand over the spot Caldwell had tried to touch. 

“Hope,” she begrudgingly admitted, feeling it like a poison spreading in her blood. “False hope.” 

Caldwell smiled again, ghostly hand still touching. “ _But then Pandora peered into the box_ _and found one more thing in the bottom.”_  

Helen _did_ scream then. Long and loud. 

* * *

**_Seven_  **

“We all used to think you were right fit.” 

Slumped against the window by her bed, Helen didn’t look up. She sat with one leg folded beneath her, the other dangling over the edge of the mattress, blankets twisted around her ankle. Her breath condensed against the smooth glass, in, out. Still alive. Not dead yet. 

“Thanks, Kieran.” 

The soldier lounged on top of one of the storage trunks, chest blessedly whole, organs all where they should be. Small mercies, in this place.  

“Didn’t understand why you liked them so much but…guess I sorta do now.” 

Beyond the window the sun shone brightly, the smaller children frolicking in the grass with gleeful abandon until the older ones returned. Helen watched the youngest, a blond haired girl as she dug in the dirt for insects, hands and forearms flecked with mud. 

“You were a good man, Kieran,” Helen sighed. “I’m sorry it went the way it did.” 

From the corner of her eye, Kieran shrugged. “Happens to all of us. Not you though. She’d never let it happen to you.” 

“ _For you are my special girl,”_ Helen breathed against the window, fingers spasming against her swollen belly. “ _You will always be with me._ ” 

Melanie had started to gather the hungries, herding them to cluster around the entrances to where the children had set up their homes. Silent and watchful guardians. The younger ones would dart between their stationary legs, tug on decaying arms. Play things. Everything in this new world was their play thing. 

Kieran shuffled closer. “You think it was a good idea, your lesson the other day?” 

The young girl had found something in the dirt and held it aloft triumphantly, her little jaws grinding.  

“They would find out sooner or later.” 

Helen had taught the children about reproduction. Melanie had had so many questions, as usual. Most were too young, but Helen had seen some of the older teenagers re-enacting things glimpsed in books or magazines, and thought it time to tell them all. 

Kieran peered out the window doubtfully. His breath left no moisture on the window pane. It wouldn’t, not when he didn’t have any. “Sure they can even…you know…” 

“I have a hunch.” 

The pathogen was smart. It would procreate. Evolve. Adapt. 

Kieran plopped down onto the bed beside her. “So c’mon, I gotta know. Why not me?” 

Helen pulled away from the window to finally look at him. Same young, handsome, face she remembered. Not shredded. Skin not peeled from his skull in bloody strips. Melanie had eventually gone back for him, brought his body back to the lab and buried it as Helen instructed. If Helen crawled into the cabin of the truck, she could see the exact spot, two stacks of rocks piled side by side. Two lonely graves. 

Melanie didn’t bury Caldwell. Maybe there wasn’t enough left. 

“You were too…” Helen searched for a word. “Young.” 

Kieran frowned, but his eyes still smiled. “That’s a terrible answer. I was only like, five years younger than you.” 

They had all been young at the base. Soldiers, that fought and fed and fucked when the fear of life outside got too much. Helen had always held herself apart from them, always thinking she would be leaving, leave the dark damp corridors and return to a life in Beacon. A better life. A _human_ life. 

“I thought…I was different,” Helen said quietly. “That I wasn’t like the other soldiers, that I was better. Showing those kids kindness. Compassion.” 

Kieran nodded like he understood. “Liked the kids more than us.” 

Her eyes hurt. Helen blinked rapidly, trying to get her swimming vision to focus. “Once.” 

Kieran reached for the book at the foot of the bed. The glue had held but it was still a sorry sight, tatty and mashed together like a paper monster. 

“Why do you keep reading this one?” 

Helen shrugged. “It’s about fire and love. There’s a happy ending.” 

Kieran hefted the book in his hand. “Is that what you want? A happy ending?” 

Helen turned back to the window, to the girl chomping on what Helen could now see was a long centipede. “There are no happy endings, Kieran. Only in stories.” 

* * *

**_Eight_  **

“Tell me again,” Helen mumbled, wrapped like a caterpillar inside a chrysalis in her blankets. “How we found the children.” 

She felt like Moby Dick, huge and beached upon her bed while waiting for Ishmael to come and put her out of her misery. Melanie had liked that story, wanted to see the ocean for herself one day.  

But Ishmael never came with his harpoon, just Caldwell, sly eyed and watchful. 

“You know that story already,” Caldwell said, seated beside Helen, her legs stretched out on the bed, her ghost hand cold against Helen’s hot cheek. Maybe Caldwell reminded Helen of her mother. Maybe that’s why she had disliked her so much. 

“I know that I _know,”_ Helen wiggled in her cocoon, still waiting to change. To evolve. _“_ Humor me.” 

Caldwell frowned, dragging her finger down Helen’s sweaty temple. “I hardly think that’s healthy for you at this stage.” 

Helen had been dreaming lately. Dreams where she woke up to a different body, her insides hollowed out like someone had taken a scoop to her organs and just _slurp,_ gone. A few bites, and no more Helen. Eaten from the inside, a host to something more advanced, more evolved. Pitiful, human, Helen. Good for nothing but fodder for the next generation. 

 _Yum._  

“You told Melanie,” Helen accused, pulling the blanket higher around her chin. Toasty. She’d been forgetting to turn off the generator at night and the temperature in the lab was warmer than it should be. Hot. But hot was good for caterpillars, they grew more quickly. “About the mothers in the maternity ward. Cored.” 

“I told her that because I wanted her to understand how very non-human she was. You, Helen, _are_ human.” 

Helen chuffed a laugh. “The very last one.” 

Caldwell looked meaningfully at her curved belly still rising like a whale from the deep under the blankets. “Not the last.” 

“The last,” Helen disagreed, feeling movement beneath her navel. “ _It_ will be something else. Something better.” 

Caldwell’s lips thinned into a disapproving line, but she didn’t reply.  

Sometimes Helen dreamed of the romance book hero and heroine, locked in a sweaty embrace while the world burned around them. Burned _because_ of them. 

 _That must be nice,_ she thought every time she woke up. _To not die alone._  

* * *

 

**_Nine_  **

It was such a beautiful day. Melanie had come with more books, enthusiastic voice chirping to Helen even through the glass in the airlock. Helen had politely listened and gave praise where it was expected.  

“-and I brought this for the baby,” Melanie held a colorful children’s book to the window. Bright primary colors danced in Helen’s eyes. “So you can read to it, like you read to us.” 

“Thank you, Melanie.” 

The girl beamed. “You’re welcome, Miss Justineau. You seem better. Will the baby come soon?” 

“Soon,” Helen promised, smile cracking her dry lips. “Very soon. You’ll look after it, won’t you?” 

Melanie frowned, perturbed Helen could think that she wouldn’t. “Of course, Miss Justineau. I can’t wait to see it. I’ve never seen a real baby before.” 

No, there had been none of that at the base. In a few years the older girls here would be having their own as nature demanded it, but Helen’s would be the first these children would experience. 

The sun eventually slipped from the sky. Melanie went to gather the children and tuck them into their beds, safe and snug. Helen stayed in the airlock, watching the world go from bright to dark. Automatically the lights came on, flooding her little room with a warm glow she couldn’t feel. 

The cold had just begun to settle into her bones when large hands settled on her shoulders, stubble scraping against the back of her sweaty neck. 

“Helen.” 

Helen watched her reflection in the glass door. She stood alone, ghostly and huge. “I wondered when you might show up.” 

Sergeant Parks hummed, rubbing his chin against the nape of her neck. He had never been _Eddie._ Not to her. Not for her. That was reserved for his dead wife, and her only. 

Helen frowned, her reflection grimacing back. 

“I think I’ve figured it out.” 

Parks chuckled. “That so?” 

Helen nodded, shoulders bumping against his chest. Arms snaked under her elbows to rest above the squirming child in her belly. 

“There was never a happy ending to the human story. From the beginning we’ve been doomed. Maybe our curiosity did it, our hubris, or our compassion. But we brought this on ourselves and a happy ending was never on the cards. It’s _theirs_.” 

“What does that make you then?” Parks asked, feeling so very _real._ She could feel his breath against her hair, the rise and fall of his chest at her back. But he wasn’t. He was buried out back beside Kieran, rotting and dead.  

“A narrator I guess.” 

The spores were releasing again. They fell like snowflakes, coating the ground and tapping hopefully against the windows. _Let us in, Helen._  

She took a deep breath, resting her hands on his, finger catching on the metal of his wedding ring. 

“Does it hurt?” 

He understood what she meant. 

“Like a fire. But it’s quick.” 

Beyond the doors, the world waited, expectant and silent. It would welcome their child, and it would thrive running wild with the others. Strong. Changed.  

With Melanie. 

Helen reached out a trembling arm, resting her hand on the door release latch.  

At her back, Parks was silent, pressing a dry kiss to her neck. It wasn’t truly him, just something her mind had conjured to give herself comfort. Whatever there was after death, Eddie Parks had gone there to be with a wife who loved him and he her.  

Love like the kind in stories had never been meant for Helen. She received only twisted mockeries of it, damned and consuming. The obsessive adoration of a child. The disappointed gaze of a not-mother. The hopeless lust of a young man. The broken jagged remains of a heart from an older one.  

Her love razed worlds. _She_ razed worlds.  

Her child would not do the same. 

“But then Pandora peered into the box and found one more thing in the bottom,” Helen whispered, sweaty fingers grasping the latch more firmly. “It was hope, and she lifted it in her hands and set it free.” 

She pulled, and the glass doors of the airlock slid open with a sigh of relief. 

* * *

 

**_Zero_  **

 

The alcohol burned her mouth and throat like acid, and Helen coughed, spluttering.  

Across from her, Sergeant Parks laughed, low and rasping as he took the bottle back from her, taking a swig for himself. In the dim light of the room it was easy to get lulled into a state of almost security, but Helen’s nerves still thrummed from her encounter with the chained hungry. It sat like bad food in her belly, heavy and _wrong._ To die like that, all alone in the dark, chewing on yourself to survive. She hoped there was no human left inside because that was a fate even the ancient Greeks would have winced at. 

Parks sighed, stretching out his legs with a wince. His previous words still stuttered around Helen's brain as they shared a companionable silence. 

 _I’ve never met a good person. Or a bad one. You just do whatever’s in you to do._  

 _So no-one’s ever responsible for anything?_  

 _Responsible to who?_  

Helen wasn’t religious. There had been others in Beacon who had believed this all to be part of some larger plan. _Everything happens for a reason,_ they would bleat, searching for meaning in everything. Like the world couldn’t be awful just for the sake of being awful. 

Helen had tried to make it less awful. At least, she thought she had. To save herself? To save _them?_ She didn’t know, and it didn’t help settle the awful feeling in her gut. 

“I used to think you were cruel,” she said quietly, staring at Parks’ boots in the gloom. “Mean for no other reason than you could be.” 

Parks took another drink, some dribbling down the sides of his mouth. He still held the rifle in one hand, ever watchful.  

“I was trying to protect everyone,” he said gruffly, setting the bottle down with a gentle _clink._ “The best way I knew how.” 

Something in the Sergeant had gentled during their headlong run towards Beacon. Melanie thought he was warming up to her, Caldwell that he was losing his edge. Kieran was the same blind loyal he had ever been, like a puppy eager to please a master. But Helen could see the truth, that rather, the Sergeant was _relieved_. The responsibilities he had shouldered back at base were gone, now he had only a small unit of four to worry about.  

He would protect them, he would die for them, and when that day came it would probably be a relief. Helen wished she could be half as selfless. 

Parks sighed. “Look, Miss Justineau-“ 

“Helen,” she offered quietly. It startled him, and he watched her for a moment as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it didn’t come, he breathed out slowly. 

“Helen then. You should get some sleep.” He didn’t offer his own name, and she didn’t mind. That was his to keep. 

She could hear the distant hum of Melanie’s voice down the hallway. Kieran was watching her, and from the sounds of it Melanie was reading out loud to the soldier. She was safe, for now. Helen’s nerves didn’t believe it, still jittery and frightened by the chained hungry, as if it was an ill omen of the future. 

Helen shuffled to her knees, ignoring the twinge of pain in her legs from the run earlier. She had grown soft living at the base, unused to so much physical activity.  

Parks watched her suspiciously as she moved closer, fingers curling around the stock of his rifle as if he suddenly expected her to start gnawing on him. Carefully, moving slowly enough that he could stop her, she spread her hands above his knees, pressing her weight against his thighs. She squeezed once, muscles jumping beneath her palms. An invitation. 

He stared at her, the smell of alcohol strong as she pushed a little more into his space.  

“If you want a fumble in the dark, Gallagher is your man,” Parks murmured. “Kid probably hasn’t taken his eyes off your ass for more than two seconds.” 

She stifled a laugh, her hands sliding against his army fatigues, daring to travel further up. “He’s practically a decade younger than me.” 

She saw a faint quick of his lips that could have been the beginnings of a smile. “And I’m a decade _older._ Go to sleep, Helen.” 

As ever, Helen remained stubborn. “No.” 

She wasn’t like the lonely hungry down in the bowels of the hospital. She was _alive_ and she wanted to feel it, needed to know that she was different. Special. If for just a moment. 

Parks’ lips were dry as she pressed hers to them and he didn’t move, not until her hands swept into the v of his hips and he flinched, a stuttering breath rattling out of his lungs and gaining her access.  

His reservations seemed to crumble then, the bottle discarded in favor of grasping her hip as Helen straddled his lap, knees thudding against the tiled floor either side of his hips. The gun was carefully kept close to hand, but he released it long enough to slide callused hands underneath her sweater and shirt, fingers swirling patterns along her ribs. His mouth was hers, and he went where she pushed him, pliant but firm. Solid. She could take, but he would not give. Not everything.  

It wasn’t the thing of songs. There was no time to be careful, and no feeling to make it love. Helen ended up on her hands and knees, shirt rucked up around her grimy bra so her bare skin shivered at the cool air, Parks’ hands on her hips a hot contrast. Her trousers were dragged down around her ankles, caught on her boots and when Park shifted his hips full against hers, pushing inside her, it was more pain than pleasure. 

Helen scrabbled at the floor as she gasped, mouth stretched wide and wordless, but Parks rested his weight onto her back, shifting his hands to hers to stop the noise.  

“Easy,” he grunted, sounding winded. “Easy. Wait.” 

He had stilled, chest heaving and pressed against her still clothed upper back as he waited for her to calm, for her body to adjust.  

Helen peeled back her lips in a copy of Melanie’s snarl. “ _No.”_  

She shoved her hips back to a sudden stab of pain but she reveled in it, as she did in Parks’ strangled moan.  

“Christ, woman-“ 

Freeing her hands, Helen reached blindly behind her for his thigh, digging her fingers into the meaty flesh beneath the army fatigues he didn’t remove. Always the good soldier, Parks obeyed her unspoken order, and Helen lost herself in the movement, the sweet fire between her legs, the quiet curses and gasps bitten off into the nape of her neck. 

When he bit lightly at her neck, human teeth scraping along the sensitive skin, she let go with a shout muffled into her arm, finding her release and dragging him bodily with her, hooking her boots around the back of his bent knees to keep him in place. 

They stayed like that, each breathing heavily into the night, his fingers squeezing her hips hard enough to leave bruises. 

Finally, minutes later, he pulled away from her, landing on his ass with a thud.  

“Fuck,” he swore. She liked how the word sounded in his mouth. “That was a bad idea.” 

Helen winced, rolling onto her side to give her creaking knees relief. “Probably.” 

Later, in the morning, when dawn was barely over the horizon and the others were still asleep, she demanded him again, biting her way into his mouth, possessive.  

Because she could have him, but she couldn’t keep him. She knew that much in this world. And Parks obliged her, took her up against the wall with her boot heels digging into the back of his thighs, her trousers dangling off one leg that swished against the floor in time with his thrusts.  

And when she grabbed his hand, sweat-slick fingers sliding against the heavy gold band cinched around his ring finger, he didn’t pull away. Didn’t scold her for being jealous of a dead woman. Just buried his face into her neck and let her take. 

So Helen Justineau did.

She opened the box and took everything.

**_Fin_ **

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the angst! (sorry not sorry). I finished the film then raged at the loss of my CrankyDad!Parks/ HappyMom!Justineau fantasies. Then I read the book and they (spoilers) TOTALLY HOOK UP DAMN YOU MOVIE FOR NOT INCLUDING THIS. And this fic would not leave my brain. You can imagine either book characters or movie, I wrote it with the movie versions in mind but I left it vague for interpretation. Thanks for reading! First thing I've posted in years :)


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